Chapter Three
General Grant hadn’t been at his desk more than thirty seconds before his secretary paged him. The fifty-two year old Base Commander leaned forward in his chair and let out a sigh before picking up the phone receiver.
“Yes Karen?” His voice was deep and raspy: the ill result of thirty-five years spent smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.
“Sir,” The young female voice of his secretary replied. “You have a call on line one…it’s General Hughes.”
“Thank you.” Grant replied. General Hughes was Grant’s counterpart over at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. He was a close personal friend as well.
Punching the red flashing button on the phone, the General connected with his former academy roommate. “Good morning Adam, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Pleasure?” The voice on the other end held an uncanny resemblance to that of Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey.
“Pleasure? Do you know how many strings I had to pull to get that old T-bird of yours onto the May decommission list? Do you remember that conversation Steve?”
Steve leaned back in his chair and let out another sigh; it always amazed him how his friend could make running the Air Force’s Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center, or AMARC, sound like a matter of national security. “Why yes Adam, yes I do…”
“Then you remember I told you I wanted it wheels-down on my tarmac by 22:00 hours last night.” The hotheaded General interrupted.
“Look, we had an incident here yesterday.” Steve snapped, quickly tiring of his friend’s hostile attitude. “Some freak showed up and tried to steal our X-43 prototype but Team Possible managed to stop them from escaping. As a courtesy I offered them a ride back to Colorado, and because Lt. Steeves was the only one flying out I told him to make a stopover. So I apologize if he was a little late but…”
“Late? Steve, he didn’t show up at all!”
The Base Commander bolted forward in his chair. “What are you talking about? I watched them depart shortly after 18:40 hours yesterday!”
“Steve…” The hostility was suddenly gone from the man’s voice. “Your T-33 never got here…”
General Grant placed the phone against his shoulder and swore under his breath before placing it back against his ear. “Listen Hughes, I gotta call you back.”
“Yeah…” Was the man’s only response.
Dropping the call, General Grant paged his secretary and placed the phone on speaker while he dug Steeves’ flight plan out of his desk drawer.
“Yes General?” The woman responded in a casual tone of voice.
“Karen, I’ve got a priority-one assignment for you here.” The General spoke into the speaker on the phone.
“Yes?” He could hear her preparing a pen and pad of paper.
“I want you to contact Tri-city International Airport’s ATC (Air Traffic Control) in Middleton, Colorado and check if an Air Force Lockheed T-33 tail number… 52-9232 landed there at any point in the last twelve hours. If it did, I want to know if it’s still there. If it didn’t, I want you to contact Nellis Air Force Base and check if that same aircraft requested a transition into their airspace; same time frame. I need all that info ASAP!”
“You got it Sir.” Karen said as she broke the transmission.
As his secretary made the required calls, General Grant examined Lt. Steeves’ flight path, which showed him flying over the northern corner of Death Valley National Park before turning east into Nellis airspace: it looked like the only place they could have gone down unnoticed would have to be in there. After what seemed like an hour Karen paged him back.
“Sir?” The woman announced, her cheery tone ominously absent. “Neither Tri-city International or Nellis Approach have any record of Air Force 52-9232 entering their airspace.”
The General took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you Karen, could you come in here please?”
General Grant hadn’t even finished his question before the middle-aged brunette woman came rushing into his office with a binder full of emergency contact numbers tucked under her arm. If there was one thing he could always rely on, it was Karen’s constant awareness of the situation around her. As she saluted and sat down across the desk from him, he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before speaking.
“Alright,” He spun the map around for her to see. “We’ve got one pilot and two teenaged civilians down, most likely somewhere in the northern end of Death Valley National Park. I want you to contact the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department and the National Parks Service and have them send out every SAR (Search and Rescue) team within fifty miles. We also need to inform the local CAP (Civil Air Patrol) squadrons and get them in the air ASAP.”
“Yes sir.” Karen responded as she jotted more notes onto her legal pad. Grant then scribbled a name and number onto the back of a business card and slid it across the table toward her.
“I also want you to contact this man over at the Lemoore Naval Air Station. He’s in charge of their Air Rescue and owes me a few favors…tell him I’m cashing them in…all of them.”
“Yes sir,” Karen repeated, standing and saluting the man once again. “Is there anyone else we need to contact?”
The General leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath in through his nose. “Yes…but I’ll handle it. Just get to work on what I’ve given you.”
“Yes sir!” The woman did an about-face and exited the room as quickly as she had entered it.
Alone again, General Grant picked up the phone’s receiver and dialed information. When the operator answered he spoke in a slow and tired voice.
“Yes in Middleton, Colorado, I need the number for the Middleton Police Department…thank you.” He waited as the operator connected him. The call rang through two times before it was picked up.
“Middleton Police Department.” A professional voice announced.
Grant took another deep breath before speaking. “This is General Steven Grant, United States Air Force; I’m Base Commander at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. We’ve had an aircraft go down somewhere near Death Valley and I need you to make a notification for the families of two civilians on board…yes…no, we don’t know what their status is at this point…last night sometime…” He picked up the flight roster off of his desk. “Their full names are; Kimberly Ann Possible and Ronald Andrew Stoppable…”
“Hon? Have you seen Kimmie this morning?” Mrs. Dr. Possible asked her husband as he walked into the kitchen.
“No, not since yesterday when she left on her mission.” The brown-haired rocket scientist responded, glancing at his watch: it was six am. “Maybe she's still on her way home,” He offered as his wife walked over to the sink and glanced out the window. “Or maybe she spent the night at Ronald’s house.”
Ron was the only boy whose house Mr. Dr. Possible would ever allow his 'Kimmie-cub' to spend the night at. He saw the goofy blond as more of a stepson than a potential suitor. His thoughts were interrupted when the wall-mounted phone next to his wife began to ring.
“Possible Residence.” Mrs. Dr. Possible announced into the receiver. She could hear someone crying on the other end. “Hello?”
“…Ann…” Ann’s stomach tightened.
“Margaret…what’s wrong?” It was Margaret Stoppable, Ron’s mother.
“It’s Ron…he…he’s missing…” The woman managed to choke out before breaking down into uncontrollable sobs.
Anndidn’t respond, she dropped the receiver into the sink and gasped as she watched the black-and-white Middleton police cruiser pull to a stop outside the window. The last thing she saw before sinking to the ground was the sight of a uniformed police officer and a department-appointed chaplain walking up the path to her front door.
